Hazmat
by Alucard1563
Summary: Sergeant Liam Snow is part of an elite Marine team know as the HECU (Hazardous Environment Combat Unit) who gets called in when things go wrong. But when a Classified mission takes them to a mysterious compound out in the New Mexican desert known as Black Mesa, the team will find themselves trying to survive a living nightmare and Liam will have to fight for his life.
1. Welcome To Black Mesa

May, 2002

Currently over Black Mesa Airspace

The Osprey's blades swirled around and around in a monotonous circle that made Sergeant Liam Snow think back to the merry-go-round from his home town during the summer. It was an odd memory to think about now, but it was the first thing that popped into his head.

"Alright boys, you know the drill!" Lieutenant Miller yelled over the whir of the blades. "We get in and do the job quick and painless. This should be a walk in the park."

"You know, you could just tell us about the job sir!" Private 1st Class Creasy called from his seat next to Snow.

"Shut that trap of yours Private; it's gonna get you in trouble one day." Miller snapped.

"I thought I was already in trouble sir." Creasy laughed.

Creasy had made the mistake of hitting on the base General's daughter and had been in hot water with the brass there ever since. The HECU didn't play around when it came to their family.

"Oy, just shut it Creasy!" Private Carl Mathers shouted at him. "If I have to do more laps around that damned track for your mouth I'll cut your tongue out."

Snow chuckled. The laps hadn't been so bad, but the weeks of cleaning duty had been hell.

The rest of the squad was quiet. Tyke, the heavy gunner, simply sat in his seat staring out at the passing New Mexico wasteland. Tyke was a large man with dark skin and even darker eyes. Next to him sat Martinez, the squad's slightly squirrely sniper. He sat mostly still, other than the constant tapping of his foot against the floor of the Osprey. LT Miller had debated about bringing Martinez to a place like this.

According to the maps they'd seen of the compound known as Black Mesa it seemed to be a mostly underground facility, which meant that a shooter like Martinez would be next to useless.

The other "Grunts" in the Osprey's around them would land and follow through with the orders they had been given. Only the commanding officers in each group had been let in on the classified orders, a fact that had Snow a little on edge.

_What could we be walking into here_, he thought.

He pushed the thought away. It would probably be a simple clean-up mission. There had probably been a chemical spill and they needed help clearing everyone out. Routine.

He sighed and leaned back in his seat.

His moment of peace was shattered when an explosion rocked the Osprey.

"Holy shit, Goose 3 is down!" the radio screamed, "Goose 3 is down!"

Snow looked out the window and saw the flaming wreckage of what used to be Goose 3 crashing to the rocks below. Flying above it was, what looked to Snow, like a huge Manta Ray.

All around them the Osprey's started to collapse, each one attacked by another strange creature.

"Hang on!" Miller screamed.

The Osprey did a sickening lurch as something big slammed into it. Miller grabbed onto the straps on the ceiling for dear life, while the rest of the men scrambled to get a hold of something.

"We're going down!" the pilot yelled, "I repeat, Raven 6 is going down!"

One of the Osprey's wings crashed into a large rock plateau and the rotor crumpled.

"Shit, shit, shit!" The pilot yelled.

Snow closed his eyes and braced for impact.

. . .

His head was a throbbing blob of pain. The whole world was blurry and everything hurt. The Osprey was upside down and Snow was being held by his seat belt. He grunted and undid it before crashing to the roof of the helicopter.

He struggled to his feet and looked around. The rest of his squad was trying to untangle themselves from the wreck of the helicopter.

Miller had managed to hang onto the strap, but the impact had mangled his right arm and it was twisted in a horrible angle.

Snow rushed over and ripped his knife from the pouch on his chest. "Hang on sir," he said sawing at the strap, "I'll get you out."

"Damn it, what the hell was that thing?!" Miller snarled as the strap jostled his broken arm.

"I was hoping you could tell me sir." Snow replied.

The strap snapped and Miller sat up, pulling off the rest of it with a grimace of pain. "Get the others on their feet Sergeant. We need to move now."

"Yes sir!"

Snow turned and saw Tyke pulling Creasy out of the helicopter's opening and laid him on the ground. The man seemed to be only unconscious, but the piece of shrapnel stuck in his thigh looked like it could be bad if not treated soon.

Snow instantly turned to try and look for the Medic, Grayson.

He passed Martinez on his way to the back of the Osprey.

"Fuck!" he snarled.

Grayson had been impaled on a sheet of metal. He choked and tried to sit up.

"Hey, stay still Gray'," Snow said squatting next to him. "We'll get you some help, just don't move."

"Contact!" Tyke yelled before the report of his heavy MG sounded.

"Open fire!" Miller yelled, grabbing his pistol off his belt and hurrying to the back of the helicopter.

"We need to move Snow!" Miller yelled.

"But sir, what about Grayson?!" Snow asked.

"He's dead anyway, we have to go or we're all gonna die."

"But sir..!" Snow pleaded.

Miller grimaced and fired a bullet into Grayson's head. "Grab his medical bag and move Sergeant, we have to get to cover!"

"God Damn it!" Snow yelled grabbing the bag off his fallen comrade. He slung it over his shoulder along with his pack and shouldered his assault rifle.

Gunfire erupted all throughout the air and as Snow stepped out of the helicopter he saw another crash into a plateau. In front of him three strange creatures lurched forward and a bolt of electricity shot through the air and hit Jenning's right in the chest. He collapsed dead next to Tyke, who growled something incomprehensible and fired his gun.

The bullet's whizzed through the air and several of them hit their mark on the creature's chest. It fell over and started to thrash, but before it could die a bolt of green split the air and another one appeared.

"All units, fall back to the building!" Miller yelled.

Snow turned and saw a large compound behind them. He fired his rifle and hurried towards the guard station in front of a huge metal door.

He smashed through the glass window and hopped inside. The squad was falling back as fast as they could, but the creature's just kept coming.

Snow fired his rifle and nailed one of the creature's in the head, before slamming his fist down on the big red button in the middle of the console.

The metal door creaked open slowly.

"Good job Snow, now let's get our asses inside!" Miller yelled.

Peterson dragged Creasy behind him and was close to the door when a bolt of electricity hit him and he collapsed.

Snow shot out of the guard station and grabbed the unconscious Creasy by his vest and pulled him, all the while firing blindly with his rifle with the other hand.

Miller crashed up against the door once he got in and fired blindly around it. "Martinez, we need this door shut, now!" he yelled.

"R-roger that!" Martinez said. He unslung the rifle from his shoulder and took aim.

As spastic as Martinez was, once the rifle hit his hands his whole body changed. Nothing shook, nothing twitched, and he fired a single precise shot that collided with the console in the guard station.

An alarm went off and the secondary door slammed down in front of them, closing off the building from the outside, and away from those creatures.

Martinez sighed and collapsed to his knees next to Miller. "I didn't think we were gonna make it sir." he said shaken.

"We're the HECU Private, we always make it." Miller said.

The flipping red light on the wall was the only thing that illuminated the room, which looked to be a large garage.

"Let's get some flares up, I want more light in case more of those things show up." Miller commanded. "And for Christ sake, someone wake of Creasy. I am not gonna drag his ass all over this compound!"

Snow reached into his bag and pulled out a flare. He snapped off the tip and the rod burst into flames. He tossed the flare into the middle of the garage with a dull thud.

Some of the others followed his actions.

"Tyke, you think you can do something about Creasy's leg?" Snow asked.

Tyke was the only other member of the team who had a slightly better understanding of first aid.

"Yeah," the big man said softly squatting next to Creasy and grabbed the back from Snow, "I'll do what I can."

"It would have been better if Grayson had survived the crash." Snow said with more than a little venom in his voice.

"Well he didn't," Miller said in a tone that broached caution. "So get over it and do your job soldier. We need that door open." Miller said pointing to the door that must have lead into the rest of the compound.

"The simple things are always hard." Martinez said, quoting Murphy's rule #14.

"I didn't ask if it was going to be simple Private, just get it done."


	2. Contact

Snow pressed against the keypad for the hundredth time and snarled. This was getting nowhere. There could be a million different combinations for the door and he didn't even have a clue of what to try.

"Martinez, you're a jammy fucker, you wanna give this keypad a try?" He asked.

Martinez shrugged. "I'll give it my best sir." he said.

"Good man." Snow replied walking back to the circle that had gathered around the flares. Of the original 10 men in the squad, only 7 of them had made it in.

"How is our ammo count looking?" Snow asked squatting next to Miller, who now had his arm in a sling.

"Shitty." his CO replied. "Most of our ammo was on the Osprey, not to mention all of our explosives."

"Jesus, we got lucky they didn't blow on impact." Snow said.

"Whether we're lucky or not is yet to be seen. It looks like we dropped right in the middle of Hell Sergeant."

"Well, Hell has gotten a lot colder then." Creasy chuckled from his spot pressed up against one of the cars.

Tyke had managed to bandage the young man's leg back up and stopped most of the bleeding.

"Zip it, Private." Miller snapped. "What's the situation on that door?"

"I've got Martinez working on it right now," Snow replied, "He's good with stuff like that."

"Alright, well see if you can get a signal on the radio. This garage is a fucking deadzone." Miller said handing Snow a portable radio.

"It just goes from bad to worse doesn't it sir?" He asked.

"We're Marines, Sergeant, all we do is fix bad situations."

Snow chuckled and walked off with the radio.

"Hey LT, I gotta take a piss, permission to go on perimeter check?" Private Mathers asked.

Miller sighed. "I'm working with a bunch of fucking 5-year olds. Permission granted."

Mathers hopped up from the make-shift rest area and walked out into the darkness.

"Martinez!" Miller yelled," How's the door going?"

"I'm getting close LT," Martinez yelled back, "J-just a little bit more f-finicking."

"Well finick faster then." Miller said.

Snow flipped through all of the channels on the radio, listening for even the slightest sound of communication, but got nothing but static. He even tried walking around the flares, holding the radio up at every angle he could think before finally giving up.

"No good sir," he said finally tossing the radio back to Miller. "Just more static."

Miller sighed. "Alright, well go and check on Mathers, he's been gone too long for a piss. The idiot probably got himself stuck in something."

"Roger that." Snow said walking out into the darkness in the same direction that Mathers had gone. His eyes slowly adjusted his eyes to the dark.

"Mathers!" he called out, "Where are you at soldier?"

He heard a soft clicking noise from off to his right and turned towards it. He walked forward a little bit and saw what looked to be Mathers, hunched over.

"Mathers what are you doing, you where just supposed to take a piss?" Snow asked. "Don't tell me you're eating something, if you are LT will have your ass."

Mathers continued to hunch as if he didn't hear him.

"Mathers, what the hell?" Snow said grabbing another flare off his belt and striking it, "What are you...?"

Snow realized in a single horrifying moment that Mathers was dead. He had a huge gaping hole in his chest and a crab-like creature perched atop what used to be his head. Underneath him was a mutilated corpse that had been ripped apart.

Snow leapt back and pulled out his pistol. "Contact!" he yelled before firing three rounds into the hole in Mathers' chest.

A screeching sound echoed through the garage and Snow turned to see a dozen of the crabs skittering out of the darkness.

"Contact, contact, contact!" he yelled dropping the flare and making a bee-line for the rest of the squad.

"Fire at will!" Miller yelled popping a round into one of the crabs that leapt at him. "Creasy, cover Martinez!"

Creasy grunted as he struggled to his feet and smashed the butt of his rifle into one of the crabs before limping over to Martinez and firing at the ground.

"We need more flares!" Tyke yelled ripping one from his bag and tossing it into the darkness.

The light of the flare exposed the horror of dozens upon dozens of the crabs filing towards them.

"Martinez!" Miller yelled.

Snow dove to his left as one of the crabs leapt towards him. He watched in horror as Carmichel missed the one leaping ta him and it landed right on his face and blood erupted as it bit into him.

Carmichel screamed and ripped at his face, but couldn't get it off.

Miller hurried over and fired a round into the thrashing Marine.

"Get to the door!" he yelled.

Snow hurried to his feet and rushed to the door, barely stopping to grab his rifle off the ground.

Martinez typed furiously into the keypad mumbling to himself as he did.

"Come on Martinez!" Creasy yelled, firing at another crab, "I'm too pretty to die like this!"

The keypad blinked green and the door shot open.

"Martinez I love you!" Creasy yelled before sliding inside the door.

Martinez followed him and Tyke and Miller slipped in right behind Snow as he hurried through the door.

Tyke fired several rounds into the keypad on their end of the door until it began to spark and smoke. The door slammed closed, smashing one of the crabs in it's way.

All five of the remaining soldiers collapsed to the ground out of breath.

"Are we it?" Tyke asked, "We're the only ones that made it?"

Snow nodded. "They got to Mathers first, turned him into some kind of zombie, and one of the crabs got Carmichel too."

"Fuck me, fuck me." Tyke whispered.

Miller took a deep breath and got back to his feet. "We need to get moving, we can't stay here anymore."

Snow stepped in front of him. "Sir, what the hell are we walking into?" he asked. "We've never seen anything like this before, we're fighting monsters here LT."

"We're gong to link up with the main squad and push through this place. We'll have the advantage if we can all link up." Miller said.

"But sir, why are we here?" Snow protested.

"To follow orders Snow, you're here to follow orders." Miller said pushing past him.

"What if we don't have any orders anymore?" Tyke asked, "What if we're all that's left?"

"Then we finish the mission." Miler replied walking off, "We're the HECU, cleaning up messes is what we do."

All three soldiers looked at Snow. Looking for some kind of help he assumed, some kind of hope that they could get out of this alive.

He had none.

"You heard the LT," he said softly. "Let's go."


End file.
